The kind of thoughts that keep a person from falling asleep can arise in either half of the brain.
Background of Hypothesis
The kind of thoughts that keep a person from falling asleep can arise in either half of the brain.
Hypothesis (Therefore)
If that's the only thing preventing sleep, then "closing eyes and counting sheep" should allow someone to fall asleep.
Evidence (because)
This activity fully occupies the left half of the brain with counting and the right half of the brain with imagining sheep, thereby excluding the sleep-preventing thoughts.
Evaluate
Is this method guaranteed to allow someone to fall asleep, assuming that the only thing that was preventing the person from falling asleep was thoughts arising in the brain?
We know that both the left half and the right half of the brain are fully occupied, excluding sleep-preventing thoughts.
But what if what the brain is fully occupied with (counting from 1 to infinity / picturing sheep) qualifies as sleep-preventing thoughts?
Goal
In order for this method to work, we'd have to assume that neither counting nor picturing sheep is a type of thinking that can prevent sleep.
There might be other necessary ideas as well, in order for this technique to work, such as .
We could potentially use the negation test on these answers. The correct answer will be something required for this technique to work, so it should be that if we negated the correct answer it would sound like a serious objection to the notion that this technique will work.